Sin City – 1

A quick historical summary of the destruction of Jerusalem for your non-preterist friends:

In AD64, Herod’s Temple was completed, and Nero burned Rome. Both events led to the persecution of Christians — the Great Tribulation.

The first Jewish Roman War broke out in 66AD. It began with religious tensions between Jews and Greeks, but the Roman response to this opened a can of worms. The Jews were mad that the Romans hadn’t intervened, and the dispute rapidly turned into a Jewish protest against Roman taxes. Jewish rebels attacked Roman citizens, and possible traitors, and overran the Roman military garrison.

Gessius Florus, the Roman governor, intended to teach them a lesson by sending troops to break into the Temple and seize gold as a tribute for the emperor. The Jews mocked him and the unrest only escalated. Florus hit back by arresting and crucifying some of the city’s leaders, even though many of them were Roman citizens.

We must remember that this was only a short time after the completion of Herod’s Temple. Jesus said it would be torn down, not one stone left upon another. We can have little doubt that those words hung over the city for decades, so the Jews felt vindicated in its completion. They were the sons of God, the eternal people. Jesus was a false prophet and they were invincible. And they weren’t going to take Roman abuse any longer.

King Herod Agrippa II, who was pro-Roman, must have figured that things weren’t going to get any better. He and all the Roman officials in Jerusalem fled the city for Galilee.

The Romans sent in their Syrian legate to quell the revolt, but the Roman leadership was shocked when the Jewish rebels ambushed them and sent them packing. Not good. Any defeat like this would undermine Roman authority throughout the Empire. Things ramped up even further.

Emperor Nero commissioned General Vespasian and his son Titus to deal with the escalating problem. They assembled four legions and began their purge in Galilee in AD67. Vespasian crushed the rebellion in the north, with the help of the armies of Agrippa II and other allies.

But, by AD68, Nero’s erratic behavior led to the senate declaring him an enemy of the people. He fled the city and committed suicide. His successor, Galba, was assassinated, which led to civil war in Rome. The throne of Galba was usurped by Otho, and then by Vitellius, which is why AD69 is known as the year of the four emperors. The entire world was now in upheaval.

By this stage, Vespasian was so popular that he was hailed as emperor by his own legions. His support only increased, so he headed for Rome and began a new dynasty of emperors. This left Titus, his son, to finish the Jewish war.

Titus pitched camp to the north of the city, with a force of 80,000 legionaries. Inside the city were 2400 trained Jewish warriors who defended the walls. There was also an incredible number of Jews who had traveled from across the empire to celebrate Passover. They had been been caught in the siege and trapped in the city now for three years.

Jerusalem had been besieged early in the war, but it was so well fortified that things had fallen into a stalemate. What was the Roman solution? Dig an enormous trench around the city wall, and then build a Roman wall around the trench. Anyone caught trying to escape the city was crucified, and there were as many as five hundred in a single day.

Despite the crucifixions, increasing starvation, and disease spreading from the corpses, the Jewish zealots rejected every offer of terms of surrender. Infighting, famine and disease were destroying the city from within. Two thousand rotting bodies were later discovered in the subterranean vaults of the city. On July 17 in AD70, the daily sacrifices stopped because there were no priests left to offer them.

Inside the city, rival zealot factions only stopped fighting each other to join forces when the Romans began building ramparts. Herod the Great had built an enormous military barracks called Antonia Fortress in 19BC. Titus captured it and had it leveled to allow access to the Temple complex for siege materials. Some believe that what is now called the Temple Mount is actually the remains of Antonia fortress.

Finally, the Romans breached the city walls. They ransacked and burned most of the city. Six thousand women and children died in one terrible moment when the cloisters collapsed.

Roman soldiers slaughtered Jews until they were too tired to continue. Blood flowed in the streets. The great altar of sacrifice was heaped with the bodies of the slain. Roman soldiers cut open Jews who had attempted to escape, dead or alive, to retrieve any gold they might have swallowed to smuggle it out of the city.

Jewish historian Flavius Josephus tells us that 97,000 Jews were captured. The best and brightest of the young were taken as trophies. Many of those over the age of 17 were sent to work in Egyptian mines, sold as slaves, or doomed to be slain by wild beasts or gladiators in provincial amphitheaters.

That was the living. Estimates of the total number of deaths vary, but the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus indicates it could have been well over a million.

All the trees had been cut down during the siege. The once stunningly beautiful and impregnable city was now unrecognizable. General Titus declared that he saw the hand of God in his victory.

9 Responses to “Sin City – 1”

So what do you think the Abomination the makes Desolation is? Preterists agree that the Desolation is the destruction of Jerusalem. What is the Abomination? I have my own idea – wondering what yours is.

I follow Jordan’s view that the abominable act that brought about the desolation was the slaughter of Jewish converts within the besieged city. As with Sodom, once the righteous were gone, there was, as Revelation says, “no more delay.” See Jordan’s articles on http://www.biblicalhorizons.com

Interesting. I am inclined to think that the abominable act was the slaughter of The Righteous One. I take this idea from the Sanhedrin’s rejection and condemnation of Jesus as both God and Messiah (Mark 14:61-64), Peter’s Pentecost Sermon (Acts 2:22-23), his next sermon in Acts 3 (3:14) and also from Stephen’s defense (sermon) before the Sanhedrin (Acts 7:52).

I agree – but here it is the righteous ones. Israel’s history follows the annual feasts, with this era as the Day of Atonement. The High Priest made two approaches in this Day – one for the Head and one for the Body (Adam and Eve, lifting the curse on the Land and the Offspring). So this massacre was a “multiplication” of Judah’s sin against Christ (using Roman state power to kill Christians). In this case, it sealed their doom. As Jordan says, Jesus overlooked the sin against Himself, but the sin against His Bride, as Greater Adam, He would not overlook.

Not to push back too much since we are both in same dug out (in other words neither of us thinks the Abomination of Desolation happens in some 3rd temple of the future), BUT I see the persecution of Christian Jews as not a separate act of abomination from the rejection and murder of Messiah. I see their persecution as a further manifestation and deeper confirmation of the apostate Jews’ original rejection of Jesus as Messiah.

After all the rejection was already mutual around the time of Jesus’ death. He said to them “your house is left to you desolate” and they said “crucify him.” The abomination was complete in that moment. Whatever abominable things happened in the decades to follow were simply like the radioactive waste spreading after the reactor exploded – like Chernobyl. The devastation continued for many years following the crucifixion, that one damnable deed that unleashed many that followed.

To us who believe the irony is that Christ crucified is both an abomination and healing balm.

But the Abomination was the sign to get out. Which means you would be able
To get out. I’m inclined to go with the early church writers that comment that
For some reason in AD66, after surrounding Jerusalem, Rome pulled out for 3
Months. The early church, to Spurgeon to Finney all comment
That this was the sign, and All Christians got out and fled to the mountains
As Jesus commanded.

Good point. The issue is we have two goats here in the city: a body of believing Jews and a body of unbelieving Jews. The good goat was slaughtered first, and ascended to God. A massacre of Jewish believers (“my brethren”) by Jewish rulers was the last straw. This ties in with the “sacrificial” nature of “abomination” in the OT. The glory of the Lord departed when the remaining believers departed, and the Temple was left unprotected. So, the tribulation was only the first half of the story, the three years leading up to the siege. After that it wasn’t tribulation, it was vengeance – the second goat carrying the sins to destruction.